As the cost curve of panels continues downward, we predict the growth of solar will continue to accelerate and reach price parity with traditional energy sources in certain geographic regions such as California and areas in the Southwestern United States. While many are weary of the solar market due to Solyndra’s failure, it’s important to keep in mind that the company did not fall victim to a weak solar market, but failed to prepare for a decline in panel pricing. While solar projects have bright futures, investors will still look for sound business models, technological innovation, and continued cost reduction. Policymakers must also provide the kind of regulatory stability that attracts investors and encourages these projects to develop. We believe the current situation is part of an industry maturation process, and that the category has significantly outperformed all expectations and will emerge stronger than ever.

Gallup and Pew polls show that the percentage of Americans that believe in climate change now hovers around 50 percent, but Krosnick’s latest poll – which asked the question in a more detailed way — suggests the figure is 83 percent — up from 79 percent in 1997. Of the global warming believers, the majority also reported thinking that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities play a role. The trend held after the researchers broke the data down by political party: 66 percent of Republicans said climate change is happening.

Further, not a single U.S. state had a majority opinion on the skeptical side, noted Krosnick. Even in Oklahoma, the home of one of the country’s most outspoken skeptics, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a large majority of the people polled agreed with the scientific consensus.

So, if the vast majority of Americans agree with the overwhelming scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, then why does it often seem the “message is not getting across to Washington,” as Krosnick puts it?  We suspect that the denial themes are driven by the dirty energy interests that are threatened by the obvious solutions to climate disruption. After all, these industries are no strangers to heavy spending on anti-clean energy propaganda. I don’t know where public opinion really falls on global climate disruption, but this latest poll is interesting, to say the least.

1. Bloomberg reports, “Solar-power capacity in Ukraine is forecast to double this year, spurred by the completion of Europe’s biggest photovoltaic plant in December and incentives a third higher than anywhere else in the region.”
2. Stephen Lacey of Climate Progress provides his “top three reasons why natural gas won’t be the death of renewables.”
3. According to Politico, “Some Democratic and Republican lawmakers still aren’t giving up on extending the wind production tax credit, which expires at the end of the year.”
4. CBS News reports, “Apple plans to build to America’s largest privately owned solar facility…Improvements to the massive data center in Maiden, N.C., which was commissioned by Apple in 2011, will include the 100 acre solar farm, green building design and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.”
5. Per The Guardian: Environmentalist, “energy expert and physicist” Amory Lovins says that “fossil fuels are the new whale oil,” and describes “his vision of how the world can attain a green energy future by 2050.”

1. According to DeSmogBlog, “Climate scientist Peter Gleick has acknowledged that he was the person who convinced the Heartland Institute to hand over the contents of its January Board package, authenticating the documents beyond a doubt and further exposing the disinformation campaign Heartland has pursued in the last week, trying to discredit the information.”
2. Bryan Walsh argues at Time Magazine’s Ecocentric blog: “it’s not the price of gas the President should focus on — it’s the effect high gas prices can have on the economy. A more energy-efficient economy — from gas mileage on up — is naturally more resilient to high energy prices.”
3. The Washington Post reports, “The coalition that has come together in Maryland to back wind power includes more than Sierra Club types. Churches, labor unions and groups of doctors and nurses have joined the push to bring wind farms to the waters off the state’s coast.”
4. At Climate Progress, several analysts from the Center for American Progress recommend that America “[t]ap the geyser of oil company earnings by imposing a tax on imported oil and ending antiquated federal subsidies for oil companies,” that doing so “will pay for an environmentally and fiscally sound plan to upgrade our crumbling transportation, water, and energy infrastructure.”
5. Huffington Post reports, “As millions of pounds of explosives from mountaintop removal strip mining operations continue to devastate historic mountain communities in central Appalachia, a powerful new music video released this week by the beloved American Roots band Magnolia Mountain captures the haunting grief and stories of stricken families in America’s cradle of roots and country music.”

1. According to Climate Progress, “In a huge step toward making the nation’s first offshore wind farm a reality, Massachusetts officials announced Wednesday that energy companies Northeast Utilities and NStar have agreed to buy more than a quarter of the power produced by the Cape Wind offshore wind farm.”
2. Energy Boom reports, “San Diego Gas & Electric has jumped into its first new renewable energy contracts of 2012 with commitments to purchase a combined 300 MW from two new projects… 100 MW from the 189 MW Manzana Wind project…[and] 200 MW of energy from the Mount Signal Solar project.”
3. According to Inside Climate News: “A new report by the National Governors Association (NGA) showed that 28 states enacted more than 60 new “clean” economic development policies between June 2010 and Aug. 2011. Among those states, more than half, or 16, have Republican governors.”
4. The Hill reports, “Major industry groups have stepped up efforts to scuttle new EPA rules that require curbs on emissions of mercury and other air toxics from coal-fired power plants.”
5. According to the Washington Post, “The Republican-controlled House endorsed a plan Thursday to vastly expand oil and gas drilling off the nation’s coasts to help pay for a $260 billion transportation bill.”

1. The New York Times reports, “Leaked documents suggest that an organization known for attacking climate science is planning a new push to undermine the teaching of global warming in public schools, the latest indication that climate change is becoming a part of the nation’s culture wars.”
2. Daniel Weiss writes at Climate Progress, “On February 13, Senators David Vitter (R-LA), John Hoevan (R-ND), and Richard Lugar (R-IN) introduced theStrategic Petroleum Supplies Act, S. 2100 that would prevent President Obama from selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve unless Keystone is approved.”
3. Chris Turner of Mother Nature Network argues that “The time is now for Big Geothermal.” Turner explains: “In North America alone, there is enough energy trapped beneath the Earth’s surface to produce 10 times as much electricity as coal currently does. Geothermal power is clean, ubiquitous and reliable. And the technology to harness it is finally ready for primetime.”
4. Stefanie Penn Spear of EcoWatch asks, “Will Natural Gas Become the ‘Achilles’ Heel’ of Our Country?”
5. NPR reports: “The wind power industry in this country has grown fast in recent years, but that could come to a screeching halt. The industry depends on a federal subsidy to keep it competitive with other forms of electricity. It’s a tax credit wind farms get for the power they produce. That credit expires at the end of the year, and it’s not clear whether Congress will renew it.“

1. DeSmogBlog reports: “Internal Heartland Institute strategy and funding documents obtained by DeSmogBlog expose the heart of the climate denial machine – its current plans, many of its funders, and details that confirm what DeSmogBlog and others have reported for years. The heart of the climate denial machine relies on huge corporate and foundation funding from U.S. businesses including Microsoft, Koch Industries, Altria (parent company of Philip Morris) RJR Tobacco and more.”
2. According to Energy Boom, “DuPont, the leading U.S. chemical maker, and Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., a leading Chinese PV panel maker, reached a $100 million deal this week with the goal of boosting supplies of solar-energy materials and promoting broader adoption of solar energy worldwide.”
3. Politico reports that “a variety of forces is pushing coal back to the brink.” These forces include: “federal power plant regulations that are more costly for coal than for other fuels, a barrage of environmentalist litigation hitting individual coal plants, and stiff competition from a glut of inexpensive domestic natural gas that is facing less aggressive attention from the EPA.”
4. At Grist, Daniel J. Weiss outlines “11 important clean energy proposals in Obama’s budget proposals.” These includes “Extend the production tax credit for wind energy.” “Invest in solar and wind energy,” and “Cut oil and gas tax breaks by $40 billion over a decade.”
5. CleanTechnica reports, “Domestic sales of solar PV cells [in Japan] rose 30.7% year-over-year in 2011 to 1,296 MW, the first time they’ve exceeded 1 gigawatt (GW), according to the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association (JPEA), which noted that government incentives for homebuyers installing solar energy systems boosted the total.”

1. Bloomberg reports, “President Barack Obama’s proposed budget would renew and extend a subsidy for renewable-energy projects that helps pay for as much as 30 percent of development costs, according to a solar lobbying group.”
2. On DeSmogBlog, Carol Linnitt asks, “Why Is Canada Killing Wolves and Muzzling Scientists To Protect Tar Sands Interests?“
3. 350.org founder Bill McKibben announces on his Twitter feed that a petition against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline passed 500,000 signatures in under 7 hours.
4. The Washington Post reports, Gov. Martin O’Malley will be speaking in support of a bill aimed at developing offshore wind energy in Maryland… The governor has made the measure a priority of his legislative agenda again this year.”
5. At Climate Progress, Joe Romm explains why NY Times business columnist Joe Nocera is “still wrong and ‘very unfair’ about the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

What do we mean by “extremely cheap?” The Pew Campaign for Responsible Mining gives us a good idea. Here are a few highlights from that report:

• “Taxpayers lose a conservatively estimated $100 million a year because, unlike with the coal, oil and gas industries, mining companies can extract valuable resources from public land essentially for free.”
• “Taxpayers face a multi-billion dollar mining cleanup bill. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the mining industry releases more toxic pollution than any other.”
• “Mining companies—even those that are foreign-owned—are allowed to take approximately $1 billion annually in gold and other metals from public lands without payment of a royalty.”

A pretty sweet deal for the corporations, if not for the rest of us. Yet there’s no mention of any of this in the Cato analysis. To put it charitably, it is disingenuous of Cato not to call for market rates being charged to companies that currently receive extremely inexpensive (in effect, heavily subsidized by taxpayers) access to public property for for mineral and fuels extraction, cattle grazing, etc. It’s especially disingenuous given that this access almost invariably leads to our public property being damaged, even ruined, by the activities of these corporations. It’s a clear case of “market failure,” in other words, yet there’s no mention by Cato of any of this in their “analysis,” let alone in their policy recommendations.

Why wouldn’t a libertarian “think tank” like Cato support what Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has called for, namely “ensur[ing] a fair return to the public for mining activities that occur on public lands and to address the cleanup of abandoned mines?” A listing of Cato’s major sponsors – ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the Koch brothers, Castle Rock, etc. – provides us a clear answer to that question. Simply stated, Cato is heavily funded by, and does the bidding of, corporations with a strong interest in maintaining, and even expanding, their easy and cheap access to public lands for mining, fracking, etc. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

Needless to say, Cato’s deep financial ties to corporations with a powerful financial interest in the outcome of  any “analysis” of their operations calls into question said “analysis.”  More broadly, it calls into question Cato’s entire facade of being an independent “think tank.”  To the contrary, it seems to us that it would be far more accurate to call Cato a public relations firm masquerading as a think tank for its corporate patrons in the dirty energy industry and elsewhere.

Cato and other “small government” proponents could change this, of course, if they started forcefully advocating for kicking fossil fuels off of taxpayer-funded government welfare.  Given that Cato’s clearly not calling for defunding dirty energy from its taxpayer-funded gravy train, the only conclusion one can reach is that Cato, along with its friends at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute, etc., are nothing more than front groups competing for polluter propaganda dollars that they can launder through a faux-”libertarian” veneer. In contrast, a real libertarian group would call for charging market rates for corporate access to federal lands, and certainly not for having the taxpayer write the check.

P.S. Also worth noting is that an “e-book” on “government waste” that Cato sent out a while back had nothing in it about expensive, wasteful, taxpayer-funded fossil fuel industry welfare payments. This seems to be a common theme with Cato.